Murray attends as F1 legend honoured

Murray attends as F1 legend honoured

A LARGE crowd flocked to Shelsley Walsh to watch the celebrations for Kidderminster Formula One legend Peter Collins over the weekend.

The memory of the Grand Prix ace, who was tragically killed while racing for Ferrari in 1958, was honoured by a host of classic racing cars on display and an aerobatic performance by a Supermarine Spitfire.

The main business of the day were two highly competitive rounds of the MSA British Hillclimb championship, with Martin Groves and Scott Moran winning one each.

Groves again showed his superior knowledge of the 103-year-old hill by taking a fantastic 0.13 seconds out of his previous record to set a new best time of 22.58s.

Moran hit back when Groves when hampered by a wet track and he roared to victory to stretch his lead in the championships to 68 points.

Trevor Willis again made the best use of his great skills and low powered but agile OMS to consolidate his third place overall in this year’s title chase, but there were no changes in position anywhere in the top twelve.

The action was watched by motorsport commentary legend Murray Walker, who also presented the prizes at the end of the stunning event.

He said: “I made my first ever broadcast from Shelsley Walsh in 1948 and it seems like this friendly wonderful place has hardly changed at all.”

Class records also tumbled as Groves lowered the record for unlimited capacity racing cars to 23.15s.

Andrew Griffiths set a time of 29.89s in his Caterham Hayabusa to record the first sub 30 second run in the 1400cc class.

Adam Steel set a new record of 29.39s in the 600cc class in his tiny short wheel-based Martlet.

Local driver Peter Cox took the historic pre-1985 racing car record down to 27.43s in his Chevron B42, while Steve Lawrence lowered his mark for historic 500cc Formula 3 cars to 37.54s in his Cooper-Jap Mark 8.

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